Posted by: Jon Fine on April 23, 2009

Yes, this actually happened: In 1984 Paper Mate found an unknown poodle-rock band called Autograph, gave ’em some bucks, and got their product a starring role in said band’s debut video. Paper Mate even teamed up their pens with the band in some promotional posters too.

In case you’re wondering: no, that guitar tone didn’t sound any better back in 1984, either. The problem was lots of people thought it did.

(Hey, it was 1984. Erasable ink was a big deal then!)

I am sitting here trying to remember if I was aware that this was indeed product placement 1.0 when I saw it on MTV in the mid-Eighties. (Did they even call it “product placement” back then?)But I can't. I was in high school and involved in recreational pursuits that left me goggle-eyed and vacantly-staring a good chunk of the time. Although, I gotta say, this video left me goggle-eyed without the aid of . . . additional goggle-inducements. “Things go better with rock”? C’mon, guys, can you do better than steal a key lyric from a Coke ad?

I was going to make fun of this in a brutal fashion, for all the obvious reasons—how ‘bout that dude gliding across the stage whilst flashing a transistor radio! how ‘bout an era in which “heavy metal” and “hard rock” encompassed bands with as much tooth as a pop-tart?—and cite this as a classic example of a Failed Product Placement. But this video got a decent amount of airplay on MTV, and Autograph’s debut album ended up going gold. Says a Los Angeles Times piece from April 1985 that I dredged out of a database (meaning no link is available):

[Autograph's] album came out last October. A month later, the video for "Turn Up the Radio" was released. At first, album sales were slow-80,000 copies in the first three months. But eventually the video influenced sales, as did a January-March tour this year, and 500,000 more copies were sold.

Thanks to a shrewd advertising tie-in, the Paper Mate pen company supplied funding for the video, along with some other financial support.

"Because of our name and the album title, `Sign In Please,' our manager (Susie Frank) thought we might get a pen-and-pencil company as a sponsor," Plunkett explained. "Paper Mate agreed to give us money if we advertised their pen. We were able to make a much more expensive video than the average new band."

Does the band have any reservations about being linked to a product?
"Not really," he replied. "We needed the money. You do anything you can to get money when you're starting out; it's so expensive to get a band off the ground. [Picky editors’ note: No. It isn’t.] With the name Autograph, it's logical for us to be advertising a pen. It would only be weird and out of place if we were advertising something like a vacuum cleaner or a roach spray."

Here’s what I want to know: Does anyone remember any earlier dances between brands and bands? I’m not talking about bands merely doing ads—long ago everyone from the Rolling Stones to Jefferson Airplane did that. (Note: If you click on any link in this post, you absolutely must click on that Jefferson Airplane link and hear a snippet of them hymning the praises of white Levis while they, apparently, were pretty whited-out on something themselves.) I mean did any non-music brand—vacuum cleaners, roach spray sponsor bands, and have products show up in their videos?

Or was Paper Mate’s long-forgotten deal with Autograph the first of its kind?

Reader Comments

Ken Wheaton

April 23, 2009 7:22 PM

Hey, all I know is, for every minute I have to work, I need a minute of play.

Jon Fine

April 24, 2009 8:02 AM

Ken:
The only way I could agree with what you just cited from the lyrics would require you drop the word "play" and use the word "sleep" instead.
Jon

Post a comment

Name

Email

Comment

About

The media world continues to shapeshift as new forms arise and old assumptions erode. On this blog, Bloomberg Businessweek will provide sharp analysis and timely reports on the transformation of this constantly changing terrain.